Cat boarding software for catteries: booking and front desk
Most boarding software is dog software with “cattery” added to the feature list. Some of it works fine for cats. Some of it quietly assumes a daycare floor and a dog walker. Here’s what a cattery needs from its software, and a few questions that show you which kind you’re looking at.
What’s different about a cattery
Cats from one household share a pen. Two or three cats from the same home usually board together. The software has to book that pen once and count it once, while still keeping a separate record for each cat: its own vaccinations, its own feeding notes, its own medication.
Stays are longer and quieter. Cats board for the fortnight their owners are away, not for a Tuesday. There’s no daycare rush. The day is feeding rounds, medication and cleaning, so the list of what still needs doing matters more than who’s arriving.
The paperwork is specific. Vaccination certificates, flea and worming dates and, depending on where you are, a licence inspector who wants every cat’s record in one place with the vet’s number on it.
Owners worry, and they write. Most of a cattery’s contact with owners is written: the confirmation, the reminders, a photo halfway through the fortnight. How those messages sound, and whose name is on them, is part of the service.
What to expect from the software
Capacity by pen, records by cat
A booking should reserve one pen for one household and count it against your real pens, so the same pen is never promised twice. Each cat keeps its own profile with vaccination and deworming dates, feeding, medication and behaviour notes. Ask the vendor to walk you through a two-cat booking from start to finish. If the second cat has to be booked as a separate stay, the product wasn’t built with catteries in mind.
One household, one pen, three records
-
Miso
- Vaccination due
- 2 March 2027
- Feeding
- Wet food, morning and evening
- Medication
- None
-
Pepper
- Vaccination due
- 14 November 2026
- Feeding
- Dry food, left out
- Medication
- Thyroid tablet, mornings
-
Luna
- Vaccination due
- 30 June 2027
- Feeding
- Wet food, three small meals
- Medication
- Eye drops, evenings
A board that shows the round
At a cattery the desk view is less about who’s arriving and more about who’s here, what they’ve had and what’s still due. Feeding, medication and cleaning should show against each stay and get ticked off as they happen, so the second person on shift can see where the first one got to.
Updates during the stay
A fortnight is a long time for an owner who’s never left their cat before. Being able to share a few photos or a short video from the pen, somewhere the owner can look whenever they want, saves a lot of “how is she doing?” messages. Ask whether the vendor keeps those photos private to the owner, and for how long.
Reminders under your name
Vaccination and worming dates lapse between visits. The software should keep them on each cat’s profile and, if the owner has agreed, email a reminder before the next stay. It should come from the cattery’s name, not the vendor’s.
Services that fit a cat
Grooming, a vet visit, medication, a taxi at either end, a bed to rent. Each with its own price and unit, and all of it editable by you. You know what your cattery offers. The vendor doesn’t.
An invoice with the cattery’s name on it
Sent at check-out as a PDF, built from what actually happened over the fortnight, and still there for the owner to download months later.
Whose name is on the booking page
People choose a cattery on trust and word of mouth. A booking page on the vendor’s website, with your logo in the corner, tells an owner they’re booking through “a system”. A booking site on your own domain, under your own name, doesn’t. We’ve explained why that matters at length. For a cattery the short version is that your name is what people are buying.
Three questions for the demo
- Book two cats from one household into one pen, then show me each cat’s vaccination record.
- Show me today’s feeding and medication round, and let me tick one off.
- Whose name is on the reminder email, and whose domain is the booking page on?
We make Boardinn, booking software for pet hotels, kennels and catteries: several pets on one booking, a board that shows the care still to do, photos and videos from the stay, reminders under your name and a booking site on your own domain. Our comparison pages put other products through the same questions, and the guide to kennel management software walks through the rest of the day.